Who built the Empire State Building? Astonishingly, no list of workmen on this historic landmark was ever compiled. While the names of the owners, architects, and contractors are well known, and Lewis Hine left us indelible images of the workers, their identities - the last generation of workmen still practising these time-honoured trades, have not been identified until author Glenn Kurtz unearthed their individual stories for this book. Drawing on eclectic sources - census, immigration, and union records; contemporary journalism; the personal recollections of their descendants - Kurtz assembles biographies of these workers. He creates not only a portrait of the building's labour force, and a revolutionary re-interpretation of Hine's world-famous photographs, but also a fundamental reimagining of what made the Empire State Building a fitting symbol for the nation, built as it was at the very height of the Great Depression.